Pocket of Posy
by corkchop
Summary: Little did we ever know even the most well-known nursery rhyme came from a Cahill - and the first one too, Gideon himself.


_Ring around the Rosy_

**A/N: So this story is dedicated to ****Gone ****because of her 1****st**** year anniversary at this website. :D Hope you like it, and as well as a one-shot, you will learn an interesting thing about the history of a nursery rhyme. **

Gideon Cahill gazed off through his teakwood window dusted with the residue flung from the odd exploding chemical vial. He was as still as a porcelain statue for only a mouse's frantic heartbeat, then leapt to action so suddenly you would think he saw a phantom. That was not far from the truth, for a ghost of idea manifested in his mind in a blink. He was in fact in complete concentration trying to compose a formula of medicine to heal the people of a horrid death enveloping all of Europe. This could be the very cure he sought to reveal! The ideal combination components seemed to match together in this series of ingredients perfectly like the final piece in the puzzle. His mood gave off an eerie aura in the air around, his jaw firmly molded into a set line of determination. Could the chemicals mixed today be the savior for the victims of the Black Plaque? He genuinely hoped so.

_Ring around the Rosy . . . _

Singing a make-shift ditty, he murmured a few words pooled with sadness, "The poor peasants, they all have to suffer within their frayed beds, in a town woven in disease stitched on every rat, person, goods, and sheltered home."

It was simply horrid. And the majority of the plague's indirect spread was Damien Vesper's rumors thickly slathered with false promises while he himself hid out within the confines of the iron castle. To think that to dance in a ring around the suffered, the man who was covered head-to-toe in the vibrant _rosy _pink buboes would save them! Tilting a box-shaped vial half occupied with liquid spider's silk, the substance poured into the main cauldron with uneven plops. Expensive and "liberated" from China's Silk Road mountain pass, it was hard to come by and money was scarce. It felt right to use it, when he had brushed his calloused fingers over its container scrawled in faded handwriting, it had send volts of tingling uncontained energy in rhythmic shudders throughout his every vein.

_Pocket full of posy . . ._

The lovely _Posy_ flower! Alas, while its sickly sweet scent and entrancing fragile beauty held grace to look upon, it had no power to stop the plague. It even contaminated the room with an overdose of floral scents. Obviously another myth clung on to by the common people as a lifeline.

It was queer, yet how folk would stuff their pockets full of Posy when around the sick, though all the town' s people would drop like flies around then no matter what remedies they used. It was like witchcraft! But they desperate enough to resort to any thread of hope if it had a chance, no matter how slim.

A half a gram of mercury jiggled from the vibrations emitted from the pot with each ripple assuming the impression of Jell-O. "Used for taking the temperature, not much else." he muttered.

_Ashes, ashes . . ._

Gideon paused to wipe his temple with an oily handkerchief. It was stained the smudged color of soot. The shade of _ashes _from the hearth. Ashes were the remains of burned objects, logs, paper, burnt offerings, and most recently, bodies of the people who died by the hands of the Black Plague. And the color of those nasty _buboes _after they started rotting, staining the person a revolting color.

_We all fall down . . ._

Yes. We do all fall down. We all fall down dead; dead as a doorknob. Then stacked away lopsided in a rickety horse-pulled wagon, amid the cloud of other corpses still warm. Buried within a mass grave with many unfortunates at who died at the same time.

The serum simmered over the fire, an intoxicating scent wafting from it, rippling in the heat. It seemed ready, all the ingredients dumped in. Time passed quickly while one sang, he thought allowing himself a small smile. But the only way to make sure it would help everyone and not the vice-versa, was to use a test dummy or a monkey. But there were no subjects around, spare his family.

That only left him.

He plucked a vial from his wide assortment, and dipped it into the pot wincing at the raw heat. He gently turned it around, and colors danced off and on it like a kaleidoscope. Raising it to his lips, he closed his brilliant blue eyes.

"Cheers."


End file.
